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Arts in Care

Welcome to the ‘Spotlight on Arts in Care’. You will find information, guidance, resources, examples and useful links that should inspire you and enable you to support older people to enjoy engaging in creative arts and improve their health and well being. We hope you find it helpful.

Across Scotland there are a number of innovative projects taking place in care homes, aimed at promoting the arts and creative engagement to enhance the quality of life and health of people as they get older. Examples include, using technology such as iPads to make music, storytelling and poetry workshops, singing and dance projects and visual art activities. The stories are growing of the impact participating in the arts can have on a person’s physical, mental, emotional and social wellbeing.

Being involved in the creative arts provides an opportunity for people to reignite a past interest, improve their skills in a particular arts form, try something new, stimulate creative thinking or enjoy the social aspect that this can bring, deepening relationships and making new ones in the care home or the local community. Older people should be able to access high quality arts and creative activities whatever their abilities, circumstances and wherever they live.

The ‘Arts in Care’ resource pack

The Care Inspectorate has partnered with Luminate, Scotland’s creative ageing festival which takes place annually across Scotland, to promote the importance of creativity by developing a resource to support care staff to plan and run creative arts sessions and also to work with professional artists.

What’s in the pack?

A film, in documentary style, which focuses mainly on the story of three care homes and their residents who share their experience of participating in the arts and the difference it has made to living life well. It shows artists and care home staff running arts sessions and residents taking part in creative arts in their local community.

There are ‘recipe cards’ for five different arts forms created by artists for care staff. The arts forms are: creative dance, writing poetry, facilitating a singing session, print making and salt dough. These recipe cards will enable care staff to run a variety of creative arts sessions. They provide ideas, suggest ingredients and give a tried and tested method to follow. They also offer some tips, variations and ideas on how to progress the arts activities. The recipe cards have all been tested out in care homes with great success. A pad of blank recipe cards is also included in the pack and you can use these to create your own recipe cards when you run a successful arts session. Once you have done this you can share these with others on the Care Inspectorate Hub by emailing hub@careinspectorate.com

There is also a card with guidance on working with artists in the form of hints and tips - have a look at this as you may want to think about employing a professional artist to run some arts sessions too.

The cover of the pack has been designed to show the diverse nature of the arts, using images that reflect the content of the DVD and the recipe cards. The care home that tested out the ‘poetry recipe card’ wrote a poem which they shared and gave permission for the words to be used on the front cover. You can find the Arts in Care resource here.

Age of Creativity is a UK wide site for professionals and organisations working in the field of arts and older people.

Playlist for Life encourages families and caregivers to create a playlist of personally meaningful music on an iPod for people with dementia.

"You said you like the dancing" was a series of works created by dance artist Janice Parker in 2014 in collaboration with Town Break Day Club, for people living with dementia, in Stirling.

Living Voices is a national programme developed by the Scottish Poetry Library and the Scottish Storytelling Centre. It offers older people, usually in care homes, activities that use a mix of story, song and poetry to prompt conversation, reminiscence and creative response.

Drake Music has been running music projects in care homes in West Lothian using music technology and notation systems which allow anyone to make music.

The Napkin Project invited volunteers to embroider napkins around the theme of home, which were then gifted to a care home to be used to encourage and enable reminiscence with elderly residents.

Dance for Parkinson's is a Scottish Ballet project which enables those with Parkinson’s to experience the benefits of dance and creativity, improving balance, spatial awareness, confidence and fluidity in movement.

Arts 4 Dementia work in partnership with arts organisations to develop workshops to re-energise and inspire people living with dementia in the community, to bring fulfilment to their lives - and provide opportunities for quality time with their carers and loved ones - through engagement with their chosen art form.

Creating Conversations has a gardening activity kit with activity sessions and discussion cards to encourage discussions around the theme of gardening.